Crash Course

Mike FloresThursday, May 26, 2011

his weekend is a rare Grand Prix devoted to the now-popular Legacy format. I still recall a few years back, when Billy Moreno brewed up the first winkings of his HulkFlash deck on the big wooden blocks in my living room, not yet knowing that a returning Steve Sadin would—maybe a week later—emerge a Grand Prix champion with arguably the greatest single-tournament deck of all time.

Once upon a time, Legacy was played infrequently at a large scale and the highest levels (maybe one North American Grand Prix per year) and catered to a comparatively small and specialized audience; but today, the Star City Games Open Series highlights a competitive Legacy event almost once a week. As a result, we have a format that is full of lively, week-over-week, innovation and give-and-take, with many of the greatest minds in the game devoting time, care, and technology to curating the still-emerging metagame.

Keep in mind there are probably forty different decks you can play in Legacy that are all capable of winning a big tournament. Yes, some are much more likely to win (a sick combo, Green-Blue-Black, or one of the Mono-Blue Control decks) than others (Goblins, Zoo, or other beatdown decks that don't include Force of Will), but ultimately, there are far too many decks to discuss in a single crash course.

But we'll nevertheless give it a go.

Part of what has enabled this overwhelming diversity is the banning of this card:

A few months ago we devoted an entire article to the various decks that you could make based on this card (Survival Survival Survival Survival), but the reign of Survival of the Fittest was an oppressive and ultimately stifling stranglehold. The DCI banned the little enchantment, and now we have a crazy and medium-unpredictable mishmash of decks.

Legacy is a format of constricted time. There are combo decks that can win on the second turn, and others that don't win until turn four. There are control decks, but they don't generally play for a position of inevitability (but of those, they will incorporate combo-like elements); many play more like CounterSliver than Fortress. Of beatdown decks, there are plenty; all different colors and all different flavors.

High Tide was the generally accepted deck of choice for most successful Pro Tour players (on the outside), but New Phyrexia has gone a long way in helping to shift the metagame once again. New card Mental Misstep—a card that can be played by almost any deck—seems perfectly positioned to throw a monkey wrench into the bicycle wheels of High Tide.

Master deck developer Gerry Thompson unleashed the above on the metagame the first week Mental Misstep was legal; both Gerry and Open Series mainstay Drew Levin made Top 8 with this deck, remarkable in part for its inclusion of Counterspell.

When playing this kind of a deck you can get proactive without breaking Standstill... Much of your offense runs though Mishra's Factory, for one thing; in addition you have the Crucible of Worlds + Wasteland interaction that allows you to not only draw extra cards but actually make big moves against the opponent; again, without actually casting any spells.

Remember what we said about Legacy being a format of constricted time? The Green-Blue-Black Control decks—often called "BUG"—are good examples. These are "control" decks relative to the potential speed of the metagame, but having access to an enormous card pool (essentially every set, ever; and with that, both the best mana and card access) gives the deck the opportunity to cherry pick from the best spells only.

BUG Control's Counterspells are all super fast... Force of Will and Mental Misstep. Its threats are top of the line as well: Tarmogoyf and Dark Confidant. But the real issue? The discard! Green-Blue-Black Control pairs the power and consistency of blue with the sheer jerkwad-ness of Hymn to Tourach... These games are only fun from one side of the table!

Speaking of Hymn to Tourach, Legacy's wide card pool and comprehensively awesome mana options allow all different decks to play great cards... Not just blue, but beatdown, too. Check out Caleb Durward's most recent Hymn to Tourach deck:

I had been a bit unexcited around the topic of the Obliterator, specifically because I didn't think it could do anything in Standard the way things are. A fourth-turn giant monster is not impressive when the opponent can just respond with Jace, the Mind Sculptor, and most of the best decks coming in to New Phyrexia were interacting with creatures via Condemn, Oust, Into the Roil, or Tumble Magnet, anyway. But paired with Dark Ritual and the damning pall of Hymn (both unavailable in Standard), Phyrexian Obliterator has me pretty enthusiastic. This creature is the realization of all of Papa Negator's dreams, the son that can accomplish all the father left behind, leaving his ancient red masters crimson in their own blood.

Legacy's tremendous mana availability allows you to combine many different cards with similar themes; also the same cards in different color combinations. For example you will see Hymn to Tourach in lots of different decks... but also Knight of the Reliquary, or Umezawa's Jitte.

The Zoo decks exemplify the best in offense, stretched across close to twenty years of Magic set releases: awesome one-drops, Tarmogoyfs, a little card drawing, great removal... and Knight of the Reliquary.

Goblins isn't the same deck that Jon Sonne used to stop Chris Pikula's fan-invigorating run in Philadelphia, largely because everyone else improved around it with new cards... but it still has some cool new-ish tricks. Tietze made this StarCityGames.com Top 8 by plucking the one Stingscourger to reject AJ Sacher's looming Emrakul, the Aeons Torn!

Check out Nick's most recent list. Three Force of Wills?!? The theory is that Mental Misstep does a lot of the heavy lifting now. Yeah, I was surprised too (but I think Nick generally knows what he is talking about when it comes to casting blue spells).

In one sense, Affinity in Legacy 2011 is weaker than the deck as it appeared in Mirrodin Block (no Skullclamp)... but the addition of Galvanic Blast is nothing less than perfect for the onetime boogeyman.

I haven't even started! There are more kinds of Zoo, loops around Mangara of Corondor, big-mana Cloudpost decks, and all manner of Explorations. But forty decks is... a lot. Who knows what we will end up seeing this weekend?

Instead of trying (and failing) to list every possible strategy, I'll just leave you with my favorite ones... those based on the bin:

I like Cephalid Breakfast even more than Dredge. It is faster (just wins on the spot on turn two), and it plays the two best cards in Legacy (Brainstorm and Force of Will). We haven't seen a Breakfast finish since New Phyrexia, though, and like High Tide, this is a deck intimately vulnerable to Mental Misstep. Anyway, Breakfast—despite being the fastest and potentially most powerful deck in Legacy—has always been vulnerable to the most stuff. Even a Swords to Plowshares can break it up!

Switching gears to finish, we have focused almost entirely on the StarCityGames.com Open Series and its transformational effect on Legacy so far. I just wanted to mention the TCGPlayer.com tournament series as well... because I won one last weekend!

The road was pretty rough; I had to overcome a reigning Grand Prix champion, a Magic Online superstar, and "the other Flores," all in a row. But New Phyrexia has been good to me so far! I can't wait to see what happens next.